Clothing helps sell the illusion of wealth and status in the second season of “Beef,” the hit Netflix anthology series. But in creator Lee Sung Jin’s latest social satire, dressing for success rarely guarantees it. Millennial husband Josh (Oscar Isaac) and wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) clash with Gen Z staffers Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton), setting off a spiral of ambition and resentment at the exclusive Monte Vista Pointe country club.
Josh runs the club as the general manager, and Lindsay handles the interior design; Ashley and Austin are low-level employees dreaming of a job with actual benefits. None of them are satisfied with where they’ve landed, and costume designer Olga Mill uses clothing to track every perceived slight, ambition, insecurity, and ever-shifting sense of status.
With a film résumé that includes “First Reformed” (2017), “Hereditary” (2018), and “Love Lies Bleeding” (2024), costume designer Olga Mill is no stranger to psychological thrillers that play with perception. On every project, Mill likes to reach out to actors as early as possible. “There’s something about a fitting that is very intimate,” Mill says. After ensuring she is on the same page with the director and showrunner, Mill sends the mood boards and references to the actor, preferably two weeks before the fitting, to “get a temperature read” about the overall vision.
Here, Mill talks through what the four “Beef” leads brought to the table and the challenges depicting generational sartorial differences and the universal desire for more.
How Oscar Isaac found Josh’s Fisher King
Forging a creative relationship early on is integral to the process. “Actors have the best ideas about their characters because they know them the most intimately,” she says. “You want that feedback. It establishes trust. By the time an actor walks in the room, this isn’t random acts of clothing. It’s like, ‘These are my thoughts behind this.’ ”
On “Beef,” Josh struggles to maintain control of the country club while dealing with personal financial issues, the recent loss of his mother, and a crumbling marriage. Isaac told Mill that for Josh’s journey, the mythical Fisher King (a wounded figure who can no longer protect his kingdom and resorts to fishing rather than healing) from Arthurian legend resonated with him. “We added little elements. He always wears a fish necklace that I found after we had that conversation,” the costume designer says. On the finale, Josh’s purple crewneck sweater is another nod to this archetype. “I created an image that’s a spiral with the Fisher King on a boat,” Mill says. “It’s very subtle, but spirals were another big visual element that we had throughout the season. I drew that image, and then our tailor embroidered it onto the shirt.”
Why Carey Mulligan knew the aviators had to go
“Sometimes actors add [or] take away in a really smart way,” Mill says. Everything can line up ahead of time and feel right, but it isn’t until the actor is in the fitting room that it all comes together. “Everyone brings in their own personal energy to clothing, and the costumes are playing off of that,” she says. “There’s always an element of adjusting in the fitting based on the vibe somebody’s gonna bring.”
Lindsay’s curated look speaks to her self-image. But some pieces never made it to set after talking it through with Mulligan, including a particular pair of aviator sunglasses that Mill and Mulligan thought reflected Lindsay’s desire to be seen as a designer. “We had the glasses in the fitting. We were like, ‘Yeah, this is working,’ ” Mill recalls. “Then at one point, Carey was like, ‘I think it’s too much.’ She was right, and we took those away.” Making these changes is part of the collaboration. “I’m really grateful for the instinct that actors bring because it’s not done in a vacuum,” she says.
How Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton helped define Gen Z style
Early on in the series, Ashley and Austin reveal they have a potentially reputation-damaging video of Josh and Lindsay engaged in an intense argument. To keep it quiet, Ashley simply wants a promotion that comes with health insurance. “We talked a lot with Charles, Cailee, and Sonny [Lee Sung Jin] about [what the two wear for their big meeting],” Mill says. “Do they dress up for the moment and try to be intimidating? Where we landed is them trying not to be intimidating. Not dressing down, but not trying to elevate themselves.”
Austin sticks to his signature athletic BOA short shorts and a hoodie. “All of Charles’s clothes, even though they are seemingly quite simple, are tailored,” she says. “None of them were totally off the rack. They were all tweaked to be the most flattering [fit].”
Ashley’s outfit deliberately matches a real trend. “There’s a newspaper article, the image is a group of young Gen Z women, and they’re all wearing light blue jeans, black T-shirts, and sneakers, standing on a street corner. It looks like the Lower East Side. To me, it looked like a flock of birds that are all the same.”The go-to Gen Z ensemble was revelatory. “In the fitting, the first time Cailee put that on, it was really like, ‘Oh my God, you’re a different person.’ Because she has such a more nuanced style, so individual,” Mill says. “She put that on, and it was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was cool to see when somebody’s center of gravity changes.”
This story originally appeared in the June 15 issue of Backstage Magazine.
